My phone call went through to Tom Watson Jr.'s office in record time. It was as if they'd been expecting the call. Someone named Fields answered, said he was Tom Watson's assistant, and that Tom had asked him to deal with me. Fields was suave and intelligent and to the point. I could tell right away that I was in good hands, and told him my feelings about the meeting I'd just been through, about using the same four judges twice in a row. When I'd finished, Fields suggested I meet him the next morning at the IBM offices at 555 Madison at 10 a.m., and rang off. That night Carroll and I consumed a lot of Ballantine's Ale and Marlboros and probably some other stuff, and the last thing I did, as I crashed in the dining room, was ask him to wake me around 9, because of my meeting. He cheerfully agreed, and I fell asleep. When I awoke, the sun was in my eyes and I realized I was in trouble. My host had let me down, and I'd slept too late. My watch confirmed it. I called IBM's number at 555 and finally got through to Fields. "Where are you?" "In my pajamas," I said. 'How soon can you get here?" was all he said. I hung up and started to give Bill some grief about letting me oversleep. He burst into laughter, as if I'd just told the funniest joke, and laughed for quite a while. I said, "This was the most important meeting of all!" Bill gently asked, 'What's the subject of THIS meeting, then?' "It's about whether I keep my job or not," I said. Bill laughed again, then he took me by the shoulders and walked me over to the kitchen mirror and made me stare at my own face. It looked awful. It looked grim. There were deep, dark circles, not only under my eyes, but all around them. I looked like something in a horror film. Take a man used to sleeping soundly. Uproot him for training in another city, then keep him sleepless for ten weeks. Then toss him in a high-pressure job and pour on the pressure for a few more months. Then put him on trial and give him far too little time to really do the job... the result of this tactic was staring back at me from the mirror. Bill said, "Are you SURE you want your job at IBM?" I stared at what my life with IBM had done to me. I was a total wreck. ...................... An hour later, I sat down with Mr. Fields in a little office in the IBM building on Madison Avenue, and his first question was whether or not I wanted to continue working for IBM. The answer to that one was easy, after what Carroll had shown me. 'No I don't,' I said. So, I was allowed the option of resigning. Which I took. On Mr. Field's promise that the Scott Robot would be investigated by another group at IBM, I voluntarily severed my affiliation with IBM. The following week, I bought an old Peugeot 403 with my severance pay, and within a few weeks drove north over the border, to Montreal. One Wild Duck was migrating, at the appropriate time of year. The Scott Robot did not die at IBM - instead, it took to the wing. The invention WAS wacky, I have to admit. However, what it prevented or by-passed was wackier still... carving code into cards with keypunches. One problem with my Robot was the inherent clumsiness of IBM cards. They were too big to handle, patterned on the size of the old US dollar bill. The dollar had shrunk in 1900, but the card hadn't. Another problem: IBM was making a quarter of its profits selling punch cards, and the Robot used recyclable computer cards. It eliminated time and waste, but also eliminating buying cards from IBM every month. The main fault with my Robot was that it was doomed, as soon as someone figured out how to connect a keyboard to a computer and put numbers and letters on a screen when you touched the keys. This was 1968, we already had a man on the moon, but that important IT event was still about two years away. The Robot was born to die, but then, isn't everything in computer science? It still had a two-year window of opportunity which would set me up nicely in Canada. ......................... So it was that I almost got to the top of IBM, thanks to the firm's wonderful Open Door policy. I almost talked to Mr. Tom Watson, Jr. himself, and at least got a meeting with his personal assistant. I even got a letter from the Chairman himself, months later, after I'd written him asking if he'd ever heard of me and my 'trial'. His letter assured me that he was aware of the details of my case and wished me the best of luck in my career.